New Jersey Schools Graduate To WAN-Based IP Video Surveillance

Jan 08, 2008

Five schools within New Jersey’s Brick Township Public School District have graduated to a WAN-based IP video surveillance system that will help to improve the safety and security environment for the schools’ students, staff and visitors.

Effective security measures like this implemented by local officials have earned Brick, NJ a fifth place ranking on the list of safest cities in America. The new IP based security system was designed and installed by North American Video along with Net Q Multimedia.

All five schools are connected on a WAN (wide area network) and the system records 24 hours a day, seven days a week. More importantly, it offers real time secure Internet viewing access to local police, fire and school administration officials so they can respond in a more informed manner in the event of an incident requiring their intervention.

According to Ron Freschi, director of large system sales at NAV, this kind of implementation is a trend he sees developing within the K-12 educational marketplace.

“We have installed more network-based surveillance systems in elementary and secondary schools this past year than in any year previous,” Freschi said. “Internet connectivity is almost mandatory in today’s learning environment and once the schools have the network in place, it’s very easy for us to add video surveillance to the application.”

The system designed and installed by North American Video includes a combination of cameras from Sony, including the SNC-DF40N indoor mini dome camera, the SNC-RZ25N outdoor pan/tilt camera w/MPEG-4, the SCC-B239I outdoor fixed day/night camera and the SSC-CD73V and SSC-CD43V day/night mini dome cameras. The video from the cameras is recorded to OnSSI’s Net DVMS NVRs and camera management system software, running on a stock Dell server. The OnSSI solution provides instant access to live and recorded video from an unlimited number of cameras, as well as automated detection of incidents, which are ‘pushed’ to school officials’ video clients, both on- and off-site. Once identified, incidents can be investigated in-depth directly from users’ desktop video clients, and video of incidents can be exported for court evidence.

OnSSI’s IP Video Surveillance System Management Solution also is built with completely open architecture making it compatible with virtually any hardware or software application for optimal versatility.

Freschi also said that in addition to being more comprehensive in functionality, IP based video surveillance systems can be more reasonable in time and expense for large scale implementation than traditional closed circuit video systems.

“The installation at the five Brick Township schools is a perfect example of the cost advantages of an IP based system for the K-12 education market,” he said. “The IP cameras use the same UTP cable as the network for power and video so we didn’t have to pull a separate cable or install power supplies. We were on deadline to have the system up and running by the first of September and we were able to do so and without any budget over runs.”

The five schools that have implemented the IP-based video surveillance system include Brick Township High School, Brick Township Memorial High School, Veterans Memorial Middle School, Lake Riviera Middle School and Drum Point Elementary School. In total there are 13 schools in the District and a student population of approximately 10,800.